Classification and Scoring of U.S. County and ZIP Code Rurality.
rurality 
Documentation: https://cwimpy.github.io/rurality/
Rurality classification and scoring for U.S. counties and ZIP codes.
Provides USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (RUCC 2023), Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes (RUCA 2020), and a composite rurality score for all 3,235 U.S. counties. Built to make rurality data easy to use in research without manually downloading and merging USDA spreadsheets.
Web app:rurality.app
Install
install.packages("rurality")
Or install the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("cwimpy/rurality")
Usage
library(rurality)
# Look up a county by FIPS
get_rurality("05031")
#> Craighead County, AR — Score: 40 (Mixed), RUCC: 3
# Just the score
rurality_score("05031")
#> 40
# Just the RUCC code
get_rucc("05031")
#> 3
# RUCA code for a ZIP
get_ruca("72401")
#> Primary RUCA: 1 (Metropolitan core)
# Merge onto your own data
my_data <- data.frame(
fips = c("05031", "06037", "48453"),
outcome = c(0.7, 0.4, 0.6)
)
my_data |> add_rurality()
# Add all available variables
my_data |> add_rurality(vars = "all")
Data
The package ships two datasets:
county_rurality
All 3,235 U.S. counties with 24 variables including:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
fips | 5-digit county FIPS code |
rurality_score | Composite score (0-100) |
rurality_classification | Urban, Suburban, Mixed, Rural, Very Rural |
rucc_2023 | USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Code (1-9) |
pop_density | Population per square mile |
dist_large_metro | Distance to nearest large metro (miles) |
median_income | ACS 2022 median household income |
median_age | ACS 2022 median age |
# Browse the full dataset
county_rurality
# Filter to a state
county_rurality |> dplyr::filter(state_abbr == "AR")
# Distribution
table(county_rurality$rurality_classification)
#> Mixed Rural Suburban Urban Very Rural
#> 663 921 781 87 783
ruca_codes
USDA RUCA codes (2020) for 41,146 ZIP code tabulation areas.
ruca_codes |> dplyr::filter(state == "AR")
Methodology
The composite rurality score is a weighted average of three components:
| Component | Weight | Source |
|---|---|---|
| RUCC score | 55% | USDA Economic Research Service, 2023 |
| Population density | 28% | Census ACS 2022 5-year estimates |
| Distance to metro | 17% | Haversine distance to nearest metro area |
Scores range from 0 (most urban) to 100 (most rural). See the full methodology for details.
Citation
If you use this package in published research, please cite:
Wimpy, Cameron (2026). rurality: Rurality Classification and Scoring
for U.S. Counties and ZIP Codes. R package version 0.1.0.
https://github.com/cwimpy/rurality
Data Sources
- USDA ERS Rural-Urban Continuum Codes, 2023
- USDA ERS Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes, 2020
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 5-Year Estimates
- U.S. Census Bureau, TIGER/Line Shapefiles 2020
License
MIT.